Wednesday, April 30, 2014

According to catalogues I have seen for the rest of the year, 2014 promises to be a year full of new books about the Crusades, those events of perpetual interest and almost equally perpetual misunderstanding on the part of many. Set for May release is the first of several new books, with more coming in June, July, and November. First up is Jonathan Phillips, The Crusades, 1095-1204 (Routledge, 2014), 318pp.

About this book we are told:

This new and considerably expanded edition of The Crusades, 1095-1204 couples
vivid narrative with a clear and accessible analysis of the key ideas
that prompted the conquest and settlement of the Holy Land between the
First and the Fourth Crusade.This edition now covers the Fourth
Crusade and the Sack of Constantinople, along with greater coverage of
the Muslim response to the Crusades from the capture of Jerusalem in
1099 to Saladin’s leadership of the counter-crusade, culminating in his
struggle with Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade. It also
examines the complex motives of the Italian city states during the
conquest of the Levant, as well as relations between the Frankish
settlers and the indigenous population, both Eastern Christian and
Muslim, in times of war and peace. Extended treatment of the events of
the First Crusade, the failure of the Second Crusade, and the prominent
role of female rulers in the Latin East feature too.

Underpinned by the latest research, this book also features:
- a ‘Who’s Who’, a Chronology, a discussion of the Historiography, maps, family trees, and numerous illustrations.
- a strong collection of contemporary documents, including previously untranslated narratives and poems.
- A blend of thematic and narrative chapters also consider the Military Orders, kingship, warfare and castles, and pilgrimage.
This new edition provides an illuminating insight into one of the most famous and compelling periods of history.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Given recent and on-going events in Ukraine and Russia, we have heard and seen the word "Cossack" used more often in Western media of late than perhaps it ever has been. A recent book by a prominent Harvard historian, why has written numerous books on the Cossacks, and on Ukrainian and Russian history, gives us background on the Cossacks: Serhii Plokhy, The Cossack Myth: History and Nationhood in the Age of Empires(Cambridge UP, 2012), 399pp.

About this book we are told:

In the years following the Napoleonic Wars, a mysterious manuscript began
to circulate among the dissatisfied noble elite of the Russian Empire.
Entitled The History of the Rus', it became one of the most influential
historical texts of the modern era. Attributed to an eighteenth-century
Orthodox archbishop, it described the heroic struggles of the Ukrainian
Cossacks. Alexander Pushkin read the book as a manifestation of Russian
national spirit but Taras Shevchenko interpreted it as a quest for
Ukrainian national liberation and it would inspire thousands of
Ukrainians to fight for the freedom of their homeland. Serhii Plokhy
tells the fascinating story of the text's discovery and dissemination
unravelling the mystery of its authorship and tracing its subsequent
impact on Russian and Ukrainian historical and literary imagination. In
so doing he brilliantly illuminates the relationship between history,
myth, empire and nationhood from Napoleonic times to the fall of the
Soviet Union.

On Christmas Day, 1991, President George H. W. Bush addressed the nation
to declare an American victory in the Cold War: earlier that day
Mikhail Gorbachev had resigned as the first and last Soviet president.
The enshrining of that narrative, one in which the end of the Cold War
was linked to the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the triumph of
democratic values over communism, took center stage in American public
discourse immediately after Bush’s speech and has persisted for
decades—with disastrous consequences for American standing in the world.

As prize-winning historian Serhii Plokhy reveals in The Last Empire,
the collapse of the Soviet Union was anything but the handiwork of the
United States. On the contrary, American leaders dreaded the possibility
that the Soviet Union—weakened by infighting and economic turmoil—might
suddenly crumble, throwing all of Eurasia into chaos. Bush was firmly
committed to supporting his ally and personal friend Gorbachev, and
remained wary of nationalist or radical leaders such as recently elected
Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Fearing what might happen to the large
Soviet nuclear arsenal in the event of the union’s collapse, Bush stood
by Gorbachev as he resisted the growing independence movements in
Ukraine, Moldova, and the Caucasus. Plokhy’s detailed, authoritative
account shows that it was only after the movement for independence of
the republics had gained undeniable momentum on the eve of the Ukrainian
vote for independence that fall that Bush finally abandoned Gorbachev
to his fate.

Drawing on recently declassified documents and
original interviews with key participants, Plokhy presents a bold new
interpretation of the Soviet Union’s final months and argues that the
key to the Soviet collapse was the inability of the two largest Soviet
republics, Russia and Ukraine, to agree on the continuing existence of a
unified state. By attributing the Soviet collapse to the impact of
American actions, US policy makers overrated their own capacities in
toppling and rebuilding foreign regimes.

Maximos the Confessor is one of the most challenging and original Christian thinkers of all time. The Ambigua
is his greatest philosophical and doctrinal work, in which daring
originality, prodigious talent for speculative thinking, and analytical
acumen are on lavish display. The result is a labyrinthine map of the
mind's journey to God.

Maximos the Confessor (580-662) occupies a unique position in the
history of Byzantine philosophy, theology, and spirituality. His
profound spiritual experiences and penetrating theological vision found
complex and often astonishing expression in his unparalleled command of
Greek philosophy, making him one of the most challenging and original
Christian thinkers of all time. So thoroughly did his thought come to
influence the Byzantine theological tradition that it is impossible to
trace the subsequent history of Orthodox Christianity without knowledge
of his work. The Ambigua (or "Book of Difficulties")
is Maximos's greatest philosophical and doctrinal work, in which his
daring originality, prodigious talent for speculative thinking, and
analytical acumen are on lavish display. In the Ambigua,
a broad range of theological topics--cosmology, anthropology, the
philosophy of mind and language, allegory, asceticism, and
metaphysics--are transformed in a synthesis of Aristotelian logic,
Platonic metaphysics, Stoic psychology, and the arithmetical philosophy
of a revived Pythagoreanism. The result is a labyrinthine map of the
mind's journey to God that figured prominently in the Neoplatonic
revival of the Komnenian Renaissance and the Hesychast Controversies of
the Late Byzantine period. This remarkable work has never before been
available in a critically based edition or English translation.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

In my mini-series on Orthodox Constructions of the West, I noted with great gratitude that we seem to be entering a phase where scholarship is demythologizing much of how Eastern and Western Christians have conceived of each other and especially of our dolorous history. That campaign gains further steam in a book just published in January. I knew the first editor, Andrii Krawchuk, very slightly when our time overlapped briefly at the Sheptytsky Institute in Ottawa, and he has authored other well-received studies, especially in Ukrainian church history and moral theology. He's teamed up with Thomas Bremer (author of a recently published book on Russian Orthodox history, and editor of other, earlier collections) to produce what looks to be a rich volume stuffed with interesting articles: Andrii Krawchuk and Thomas Bremer,Eastern Orthodox Encounters of Identity and Otherness: Values, Self-Reflection, Dialogue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 380pp.

About this book we are told:

From diverse international and
multi-disciplinary perspectives, the contributors to this volume analyse
the experiences, challenges and responses of orthodox churches to the
foundational transformations associated with the dissolution of the
USSR. Those transformations heightened the urgency of questions about
Orthodox identity and relations with the world - states, societies, and
the religious and cultural other.

The volume focuses on six
distinct concepts: orthodox identity, perceptions of the 'other,'
critiques of the West, European values, interreligious progress, and new
and uncharted challenges that have arisen with the expansion of Russian
Orthodox activity.

We are also given this very detailed table of contents:

Introduction; Andrii Krawchuk
PART I: THE ECCLESIAL SELF: TRADITIONAL IDENTITIES AND THE CHALLENGES OF PLURALISM:
1. Russian Orthodoxy between State and Nation; Jennifer Wasmuth
2. Morality and Patriotism: Continuity and Change in Russian Orthodox Occidentalism since the Soviet Era; Alfons Brüning
3. The Bulgarian Orthodox Church at the Crossroads: Between Nationalism and Pluralism; Daniela Kalkandjieva
4. The Search for a new Church Consciousness in current Russian Orthodox Discourse; Anna Briskina-Müller

PART II: PERCEPTIONS OF THE RELIGIOUS OTHER: DIFFERENCE AND CONVERGENCE:
5. Between Admiration and Refusal – Roman Catholic Perceptions of Orthodoxy; Thomas Bremer
6.
Apostolic Continuity in Contradiction to Liberalism? Fields of Tension
between Churches in the East and the West; Dagmar Heller
7. The Image of the Roman-Catholic Church in the Orthodox Press of Romania, 1918-1940; Ciprian Ghi?a
8.
'Oh, East is East, and West is West…:' The Character of Orthodox –
Greek-Catholic Discourse in Ukraine and its Regional Dimensions; Natalia
Kochan

PART III: ORTHODOX CRITIQUES OF THE WEST:
9. 'The Barbarian West': A Form of Orthodox Christian Anti-Western Critique; Vasilios N. Makrides
10. Anti-western Theology in Greece and Serbia Today; Julia Anna Lis
11. The Russian Orthodox Church on the Values of Modern Society; Regina Elsner

PART IV: ENCOUNTERS WITH EUROPEAN VALUES:
12. Eastern Orthodoxy and the Processes of European Integration; Tina Olteanu and Dorothée de Nève
13. The Russian Orthodox Church's Interpretation of European Legal Values (1990-2011); Mikhail Zherebyatyev
14. The Russian Orthodox Church in a new Situation in Russia: Challenges and Responses; Olga Kazmina

PART V: PROSPECTS FOR RELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER, CONSENSUS AND COOPERATION:
15. Neopatristic Synthesis and Ecumenism: Towards the 'Reintegration' of Christian Tradition; Matthew Baker
16.
Justification in the Theological Conversations Between Representatives
of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Protestant Churches in Germany;
Christoph Mühl
17. Constructing Interreligious Consensus in the
Post-Soviet Space: the Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious
Organizations; Andrii Krawchuk

PART VI: EMERGING ENCOUNTERS AND NEW CHALLENGES IN POST-SOVIET CENTRAL ASIA:
18. Radical Islam in the Ferghana Valley; Galina M. Yemelianova
19.
Uzbek Islamic Extremists in the Civil Wars of Tajikistan, Afghanistan
and Pakistan: From Radical Islamic Awakening in the Ferghana Valley to
Terrorism with Islamic Vocabulary in Waziristan; Michael Fredholm

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The important and prestigious Dumbarton Oaks Press (under the auspices of Harvard University Press) continues to publish important works about early and Eastern Christianity. A recent such study by Nicetas David, transalted by Andrew Smithies, and annotated and edited by John Duffy is The Life of Patriarch Ignatius (Dumbarton Oaks Texts, 2013), 232pp.

About this book we are told:

This is the vivid and partisan account of two
tremendous ecclesiastical struggles of the ninth century. One was
between opposing patriarchs of Constantinople—the learned Photius
(858–867, 877–886) and the monk Ignatius (847–858, 867–877)—and gave
rise to long periods of schism, intrigue, and scandal in the Greek
Orthodox world. The other was between Patriarch Photius and the papacy,
which at its low point saw Photius and Nicholas I trade formal
condemnations of each other and adversely affected East–West relations
for generations afterwards.

The author of The Life of Patriarch Ignatius, Nicetas David Paphlagon,
was a prolific and versatile writer, but also a fierce conservative in
ecclesiastical politics, whose passion and venom show through on every
page. As much a frontal attack on Photius as a record of the author’s
hero Ignatius, The Life of Patriarch Ignatius offers a
fascinating, if biased, look into the complex world of the interplay
between competing church factions, the imperial powers, and the papacy
in the ninth century. This important historical document is here
critically edited and translated into English for the first time. The
annotations, maps, and indexes help the reader to place the work in
context.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Though the lurid tales of economic struggle in Greece have fallen off North American headlines, the struggles are far from over. A recent book takes a look at the related notions of economic progress, "modernization," and the role of Greek culture, including Greek Orthodoxy, within the current context: Anna Triandafyllidou, Ruby Gropas, and Hara Kouki, eds., The Greek Crisis and European Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 256pp.

About this group of essays we are told:

This collection explores the current economic and political crisis in
Greece and more widely in Europe. Greece is used to illustrate and
exemplify the contradictions of the dominant paradigm of European
modernity, the ruptures that are inherent to it, and the alternative
modernity discourses that develop within Europe. By critically reviewing
the 'alternative' path to modernization that Greece has taken, the
authors question whether the current Greek economic and political-moral
crisis is the resulting failure of this 'alternative' or 'deviant'
modernization model or whether it is the result of a wider crisis in the
dominant European economic and political modernity paradigm.

The faith of the Orthodox Christian is “apostolic,” in that it
is continuous with the faith of the first century apostles. But to be
truly apostolic it must be sent into the world, speaking to each new
age. In this fresh and innovative work, Augustine Casiday shows us what
it means to re-appropriate the wisdom of the Fathers and to give their
words new life in a new age.
Beginning with the basic inquiry of what it means to accord the
ancient writers’ authority—as it were affiliating them, or adopting them
as fathers—the reader is invited to join on a journey to many new
places, as well as to ones we thought we knew, but didn’t really. This
book will inform anyone who wants to grapple with how we treat the past
and its authoritative voices. Beginners will encounter a first-rate
thinker writing comprehensibly and accessibly. Advanced patristic
scholars will be guaranteed to come away from this book with new
insights and challenging arguments.

I look forward to reading this book and seeing about an interview with the author.

Wednesday, April 16, 2014

One of the happy developments--among many--of our time in Eastern Christian studies is the development of Eastern, especially Byzantine, liturgical history. A steady stream of solid works continues to emerge, including this recent contribution by Stelyios Muksuris treating the preparatory rites of the Byzantine liturgy: Economia and Eschatology: Liturgical Mystagogy in the Byzantine Prothesis Rite (Holy Cross Press, 2013), 253pp.

About this book several prominent commentators have this to say:

"I extend my appreciation to Father Stelyios for this significant
theological and spiritual offering on the Prothesis Rite of the Divine
Liturgy. His analysis affirms how our worship and celebration of the
Holy Eucharist connect our past, present, and future as Christians - how
the Liturgy offers a continuous witness of Christ's Passion, of the
living and transforming message of the Gospel, and of the fulfillment of
all things" (Archbishop Demetrios of America, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church in America).

"Remember
when they stopped making computer manuals, and to avoid going mad you
had to buy Mac for Dummies? Well, Fr. Stelyios has written that manual
for the Byzantine Prothesis rite. From now on, whoever wants to
traverse that largely uncharted minefield will have to have this book in
hand" (Robert F. Taft, S.J., F.B.A., Professor Emeritus of Oriental Liturgy, Pontifical Oriental Institute, Rome, Italy).

"'Liturgical
mystagogy,' writes Fr. Stelyios Muksuris, 'intends to raise the
spiritual consciousness of the worshipper, from a trivial vision of the
ritual acts conducted in the church to a deeper understanding of the
meaning behind those acts... It attempts to convey the invisible divine
presence through the visible human act.' With this book, Fr. Stelyios
has accomplished just such a mystagogy. He has enriched immeasurably my
own appreciation of the preparatory ritual performed before the
celebration of the Divine LIturgy. I am indebted to him for this book.
My experience of the Liturgy will never be the same" (Metropolitan Savas of Pittsburgh, Greek Orthodox Metropolis of Pittsburgh, PA).

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

We are living in a time when critical attention to the origins of Islam is finally being paid in an important and fairly widespread manner. A recent book helps us look beyond even the foundational personality of Mohammad and into a much wider context: Garth Fowden,Before and After Muhammad: The First Millennium Refocused (Princeton UP, 2013), 248pp.

About this book we are told:

Islam emerged amid flourishing Christian and
Jewish cultures, yet students of Antiquity and the Middle Ages mostly
ignore it. Despite intensive study of late Antiquity over the last fifty
years, even generous definitions of this period have reached only the
eighth century, whereas Islam did not mature sufficiently to compare
with Christianity or rabbinic Judaism until the tenth century. Before and After Muhammad
suggests a new way of thinking about the historical relationship
between the scriptural monotheisms, integrating Islam into European and
West Asian history.

Garth Fowden identifies the whole of the First
Millennium--from Augustus and Christ to the formation of a recognizably
Islamic worldview by the time of the philosopher Avicenna--as the
proper chronological unit of analysis for understanding the emergence
and maturation of the three monotheistic faiths across Eurasia. Fowden
proposes not just a chronological expansion of late Antiquity but also
an eastward shift in the geographical frame to embrace Iran. In Before and After Muhammad,
Fowden looks at Judaism, Christianity, and Islam alongside other
important developments in Greek philosophy and Roman law, to reveal how
the First Millennium was bound together by diverse exegetical traditions
that nurtured communities and often stimulated each other.

In 1099, when the first crusaders arrived triumphant and bloody before
the walls of Jerusalem, they carved out a Christian European presence in
the Islamic world that remained for centuries, bolstered by subsequent
waves of new crusades and pilgrimages. But how did medieval Muslims
understand these events? What does an Islamic history of the Crusades look like? The answers may surprise you.

In The Race for Paradise,
we see medieval Muslims managing this new and long-lived Crusader
threat not simply as victims or as victors, but as everything
in-between, on all shores of the Muslim Mediterranean, from
Spain to Syria. This is not just a straightforward tale of warriors and
kings clashing in the Holy Land - of military confrontations and
enigmatic heros such as the great sultan Saladin. What emerges is a more
complicated story of border-crossers and turncoats; of embassies and
merchants; of scholars and spies, all of them seeking to manage this new
threat from the barbarian fringes of their ordered world.

When
seen from the perspective of medieval Muslims, the Crusades emerge as
something altogether different from the high-flying rhetoric of the
European chronicles: as a diplomatic chess-game to be mastered, a
commercial opportunity to be seized, a cultural encounter shaping Muslim
experiences of Europeans until the close of the Middle Ages - and, as
so often
happened, a political challenge to be exploited by ambitious rulers
making canny use of the language of jihad.

Friday, April 11, 2014

This semester, in separate classes with both undergraduates and graduates, I have been able to use an old trick: few things ignite vigorous and lengthy discussion in a classroom with a healthy number of Catholics (several of whom work for parishes in several capacities, chiefly those having to do with catechesis) than to raise the topic of Confirmation. So I innocently ask about that sacrament in particular, and the sacraments of initiation in general, especially the order of their administration, and bam!: a good half-hour and more of very vigorous discussion ensues. I must confess that prior to such regular exchanges with people in the "front lines" (catechists, parochial school teachers, directors of religious education, RCIA co-ordinators), I was a hardcore and unapologetic defender of the ancient and undivided tradition whereby Baptism-Chrismation-Eucharist are all given in that order, immediately, on the same day, to everyone from infancy onward. I still think that's the most theologically defensible practice, but given the dynamics in the Latin Church today, and the many pastoral challenges of a serious nature which would attend an abrupt return to the original practice, I am no longer quite so confidently willing to insist everyone must follow that practice.

My good friend Nicholas Denysenko, Orthodox deacon, professor of theology at Loyola Marymount, and director of the Huffington Ecumenical Institute, has a book coming out in May that very sensibly and intelligently looks at all these issues: Chrismation: A Primer for Catholics (Liturgical Press, 2014), 248pp.

The book is available both as a paperback and as an e-Book so you've no excuse for not ordering it. I interviewed Nick about his last book on Theophany water blessings here. And I hope to interview him again about this book in the coming weeks. About this book, the publisher tells us:

What is chrismation? Nicholas Denysenko breaks open chrismation as
sacrament of belonging by exploring its history and liturgical theology.
This study offers a sacramental theology of chrismation by examining
its relationship with baptism and the Eucharist and its function as the
ritual for receiving converts into the Orthodox Church. Drawing from a
rich array of liturgical and theological sources, Denysenko explains how
chrismation initiates the participant into the life of the triune God,
beginning a process of theosis, becoming like God. The book includes a
chapter comparing and contrasting chrismation and confirmation, along
with pastoral suggestions for renewing the potential of this sacrament
to transform the lives of participants.

Reflecting the dual audiences of this book, two of the reviewers, one Orthodox and the other Catholic (who is steeped in Orthodox liturgical theology) note:

In this book on
chrismation, Denysenko exemplifies the best in ecumenical liturgical
scholarship. Drawing on both Eastern and Western sources, ancient and
modern, he uncovers for the reader the richness and diversity of both
traditions. Catholics and Orthodox alike will benefit from reading this
work (Paul Meyendorff, The Alexander Schmemann Professor of Liturgical Theology, St. Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary).

Denysenko offers
Catholics a primer on Byzantine chrismation, in order to set up a
conversation between East and West. First, he gleans a liturgical
theology from the rite's lex orandi, including its use for the
reception of converts. Then he presents the perspective of numerous
Orthodox theologians. And all this he can then bring to the table for an
honest dialogue, since he is also well-versed in contemporary Catholic
discussion about confirmation. The result is what he calls "a gift
exchange," pointing out riches the East and West can share with each
other. Being happily grounded in his own Orthodox tradition, yet
ecumenically hospitable, he gives us a work that will cross-fertilize
the Catholic understanding of confirmation and Orthodox understanding of
chrismation. The superb result is a study that bridges the academic and
the pastoral so as to regenerate our appreciation of this venerable
liturgical celebration (David W. Fagerberg, University of Notre Dame).

About this book, which is published in the prestigious series Oxford Studies in Byzantium, we are told

At the beginning of the thirteenth century Byzantium was still one of
the most influential states in the eastern Mediterranean, possessing
two-thirds of the Balkans and almost half of Asia Minor. After the
capture of Constantinople in 1204 during the Fourth Crusade, the most
prominent and successful of the Greek rump states was the Empire of
Nicaea, which managed to re-capture the city in 1261 and restore
Byzantium. The Nicaean Empire, like Byzantium of the Komnenoi and
Angeloi of the twelfth century, went on to gain dominant influence over
the Seljukid Sultanate of Rum in the 1250s. However, the decline of the
Seljuk power, the continuing migration of Turks from the east, and what
effectively amounted to a lack of Mongol interest in western Anatolia,
allowed the
creation of powerful Turkish nomadic confederations in the frontier
regions facing Byzantium. By 1304, the nomadic Turks had broken
Byzantium's eastern defences; the Empire lost its Asian territories
forever, and Constantinople became the most eastern outpost of
Byzantium. At the beginning of the fourteenth century the Empire was a
tiny, second-ranking Balkan state, whose lands were often disputed
between the Bulgarians, the Serbs, and the Franks.

Using Greek, Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman sources, Byzantium and the Turks in the Thirteenth Century
presents a new interpretation of the Nicaean Empire and highlights the
evidence for its wealth and power. It explains the importance of the
relations between the Byzantines and the Seljuks and the Mongols,
revealing how the Byzantines
adapted to the new and complex situation that emerged in the second half
of the thirteenth century. Finally, it turns to the Empire's Anatolian
frontiers and the emergence of the Turkish confederations, the biggest
challenge that the Byzantines faced in the thirteenth century.

The Russian Empire presented itself to its subjects and the world as an
Orthodox state, a patron and defender of Eastern Christianity. Yet the
tsarist regime also lauded itself for granting religious freedoms to its
many heterodox subjects, making 'religious toleration' a core attribute
of the state's identity. The Tsar's Foreign Faiths shows that
the resulting tensions between the autocracy's commitments to Orthodoxy
and its claims to toleration became a defining feature of the empire's
religious order.

In this panoramic account, Paul W. Werth
explores the scope and character of religious freedom for Russia's
diverse non-Orthodox religions, from Lutheranism and Catholicism to
Islam and Buddhism. Considering both rhetoric and practice, he examines
discourses of religious toleration and the role of confessional
institutions in the empire's governance. He reveals the paradoxical
status of Russia's heterodox faiths as both established and 'foreign',
and explains the dynamics that shaped the fate of newer conceptions of
religious liberty after the mid-nineteenth century. If intellectual
change and the shifting character of religious life in Russia gradually
pushed the regime towards the acceptance of freedom of conscience, then
statesmen's nationalist sentiments and their fears of 'politicized'
religion impeded this development. Russia's religious order thus
remained beset by contradiction on the eve of the Great War. Based on
archival research in five countries and a vast scholarly literature, The Tsar's Foreign Faiths
represents a
major contribution to the history of empire and religion in Russia, and
to the study of toleration and religious diversity in Europe.

Scriptural interpretation was an important form of scholarship for
Christians in late antiquity. For no one does this claim ring more true
than Origen of Alexandria (185-254), one of the most prolific scholars
of Scripture in early Christianity. This book examines his approach to
the Bible through a biographical lens: the focus is on his account of
the scriptural interpreter, the animating centre of the exegetical
enterprise. In pursuing this largely neglected line of inquiry, Peter W.
Martens discloses the contours of Origen's sweeping vision of
scriptural exegesis as a way of life. For Origen, ideal interpreters
were far more than philologists steeped in the skills conveyed by
Greco-Roman education. Their profile also included a commitment to
Christianity from which they gathered a spectrum of loyalties,
guidelines, dispositions, relationships and doctrines that tangibly
shaped how they practiced and thought about their biblical scholarship.
The study explores the many ways in which Origen thought ideal
scriptural interpreters (himself included) embarked upon a way of life,
indeed a way of salvation, culminating in the everlasting contemplation
of God. This new and integrative thesis takes seriously how the
discipline of scriptural interpretation was envisioned by one of its
pioneering and most influential practitioners.

Thursday, April 3, 2014

Though it will set the usual Athonites and would-be Athonite bloggers to foaming at the mouth, the patriarchs of old and new Rome are set to commemmorate the meeting 50 years ago of their predecessors in Jerusalem. A short little book that was set for release in March, but appears delayed until the middle of this month, discusses that meeting in 1964 and its implications in the half-century since: John Chryssavgis, ed., Dialogue of Love: Breaking the Silence of Centuries (Fordham UP, 2014), 96pp.

About this book we are told:

In 1964, a little noticed, albeit pioneering encounter in the
Holy Land between the heads of the Roman Catholic Church and the
Orthodox Church spawned numerous contacts and diverse openings between
the two "sister churches," which had not communicated with one another
for centuries. This year, fifty years later, Pope Francis and Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew will meet again in Jerusalem to commemorate that
historical event and celebrate the close relations that have developed
through mutual exchanges of formal visits and an official theological
dialogue that began in 1980.

This book contains three unique chapters: 1) A sketch of the
behind-the-scenes challenges and negotiations that accompanied the
meeting in 1964, detailing the immediate consequences of the event and
setting the tone for the volume. 2) An inspirational account, albeit
interwoven with a scholarly evaluation of the work of the North American
Standing Council on Orthodox/Catholic relations over the last decades.
3) A recently discovered reflection on the meeting that took place fifty
years ago by one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the
twentieth century, expressing cautious optimism about the future of
Christian unity.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

It has this year become obvious that one of the major themes to be developed within Orthodox theology in the coming years will be the relationship between Church and state, a relationship which has entered a new phase for much of Orthodoxy in the post-Soviet period. We have therefore started to see a number of books, most previously noted on here, emerge in the past few years on Church-state relations as well as related questions about, e.g., human rights. Set for release in May is a hefty tome that promises to take a wide-ranging look at these questions and relations in a wonderfully diverse array of contexts: Lucian Leustean, ed., Eastern Christianity and Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2014), 864pp.

About this book the publisher provides us an overview as well as detailed table of contents thus:

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of Eastern
Christian churches in Europe, the Middle East, America, Africa, Asia and
Australia. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it
examines both Orthodox and Oriental churches from the end of the Cold
War up to the present day. The book offers a unique insight into the
myriad of church-state relations in Eastern Christianity and tackles
contemporary concerns, opportunities and challenges, such as religious
revival after the fall of communism; churches and democracy; relations
between Orthodox, Catholic and Greek Catholic churches; religious
education and monastic life; the size and structure of congregations;
and the impact of migration, secularisation and globalisation on Eastern
Christianity in the twenty-first century.

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About Me

I am the editor of Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies; author of Orthodoxy and the Roman Papacy; a tenured associate professor and chairman of the Dept. of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Saint Francis in Fort Wayne, Indiana; and a subdeacon of the Ukrainian Greco-Catholic Church (UGCC) resident in the Eparchy of St. Nicholas of Chicago.